This reminds me of a concept I ponder sometimes regarding Alzheimer's disease. I always fear that one day I will awaken to find everything I know to be lost and that I will retreat to an earlier state of mind that I thought I had overcome, only to unrealized those realizations.
Even still, I find when I have conquered my own mind that there was always something I'd overlooked or underlooked that just has this rolling-stone effect in my mind until I stand over the rock and ask it why it's still moving after everything I'd done to it. This isn't to be confused with "over-analysis" or some terrible inability to let anything go that happens in my life, but instead it's something I've encountered that can't escape me.
If I were to develop Alzheimer's disease I would depend on others to help me remember those terrible times and the most wonderful times. I wonder who would be there to help me remember those times. Who would they choose to help me remember? Who would they choose to let me forget? What if there was no one but some volunteer worker trying to spend time with me? What would happen to those memories?
Basically my point to this whole endless typing (which as turned into a post-length comment and I'm sorry about that) is that if I were to develop Alzheimer's disease, wouldn't I have already forgotten what already happened just recently? Wouldn't in some time-paradoxical way I be already be forgetting these moments or this moment?
I suppose Alzheimer's disease would be like living your life one day and the next awakening (X) number of years later forgetting that happened between now and then. I mean I've been around for almost 21 years on Earth and I can't remember everything that happened in that time. Imagine a whole lifetime just blown away! In the end, I really know nothing but common knowledge about Alzheimer's disease and the fact that my mother's side of the family suffers from a history of it. Everything I know is just speculation from the side-lines. This is where Wikipedia and the internet come in handy!
1 comment:
one of my biggest fears is forgetting anything. even if not forgetting completely, not remembering in perfect detail how beautiful/happy/sad/magical something has been, the exact feeling of a moment... i don't want anything to fade with time. that's why I take so many pictures, write my memories from the past, and write down whenever something has happened to me, and why I dwell on the past so much. I think you & I are very alike in this matter ^^
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